Praise the Lord we discovered a pretty good place to hike near our house! Our previous attempt at hiking near Columbus was ok, but not great by any means. Today, however, we tried out another park with Aaron and Tracy and were pleasantly surprised by the trails as well as the February sunshine!

Highbanks has trees, trails, bluffs, ravines, bridges, a river and all sorts of things we like to encounter while hiking.

Ruby wanted to walk by herself the entire time… which is less like walking and more like standing by the side of the trail looking for rocks. Luckily Uncle Aaron was willing to carry her on his shoulders so we could actually make forward progress. We stopped by the nature center and Ruby did some light reading.

Discovering this park really made us so happy today. Ryan is THRILLED to have somewhere to be in nature on the weekends that he isn’t working. Hooray for Highbanks! Double hooray for Aaron and Tracy visiting us in Columbus!

Having my brother Aaron and his lovely-in-every-way wife Tracy here for the last couple of days has been unbelievably wonderful. They’re super for many reasons, one of which is the fact that they’ve been happy just hanging out with the girls and I doing all the stuff we usually do while Ryan is working. Including running errands in the mornings and being home during the nap time window in the afternoons… we’ve had a lot of fun too!

We’ve been to the zoo twice, worked out at the Y, hung out at the Homestead Park, had a couple of picnic lunches, Ryan and Aaron grilled us some delicious steaks, and we all had dinner “out” tonight. Simply too much happiness is happening over here.

As you can see, Ruby and Clara have had unending fun and entertainment from their Uncle Aaron and Aunt Tracy. I’m pretty sure there will be massive amounts of depression (mostly from Ryan and I) when they go back home.